Local people & ancient cultures in Lake Titicaca, Peru Travel скачать в хорошем качестве

Local people & ancient cultures in Lake Titicaca, Peru Travel

Local people & ancient cultures in Lake Titicaca, Peru Travel, Peru Lake Titicaca floating island, Lake Titicaca Travel Guide Travel Videos (Subscribe Now) 🔔   / @travel-guide   Lake Titicaca, Spanish Lago Titicaca, the world’s highest lake navigable to large vessels, lying at 12,500 feet (3,810 metres) above sea level in the Andes Mountains of South America, astride the border between Peru to the west and Bolivia to the east. Titicaca is the second largest lake of South America (after Maracaibo). It covers some 3,200 square miles (8,300 square km) and extends in a northwest-to-southeast direction for a distance of 120 miles (190 km). It is 50 miles (80 km) across at its widest point. A narrow strait, Tiquina, separates the lake into two bodies of water. The smaller, in the southeast, is called Lake Huiñaymarca in Bolivia and Lake Pequeño in Peru; the larger, in the northwest, is called Lake Chucuito in Bolivia and Lake Grande in Peru. The meaning of the name Titicaca is uncertain, but it has been variously translated as Rock of the Puma or Crag of Lead. Titicaca lies between Andean ranges in a vast basin (about 22,400 square miles [58,000 square km] in area) that comprises most of the Altiplano (High Plateau) of the central Andes. In the snow-covered Cordillera Real on the northeastern (Bolivian) shore of the lake, some of the highest peaks in the Andes rise to heights of more than 21,000 feet (6,400 metres). The lake averages between 460 and 600 feet (140 and 180 metres) in depth, but the bottom tilts sharply toward the Bolivian shore, reaching its greatest recorded depth of 920 feet (280 metres) off Isla Soto in the lake’s northeast corner. More than 25 rivers empty their waters into Titicaca; the largest, the Ramis, draining about two-fifths of the entire Titicaca Basin, enters the northwestern corner of the lake. One small river, the Desaguadero, drains the lake at its southern end. This single outlet empties only 5 percent of the lake’s excess water; the rest is lost by evaporation under the fierce sun and strong winds of the dry Altiplano. Titicaca’s level fluctuates seasonally and over a cycle of years. During the rainy season (summer, from December to March) the level of the lake rises, normally to recede during the dry winter months. It was formerly believed that Titicaca was slowly drying up, but modern studies have seemed to refute this, indicating a more or less regular cycle of rise and fall. Titicaca’s waters are limpid and only slightly brackish, with salinity ranging from 5.2 to 5.5 parts per 1,000. Surface temperatures average 56 °F (14 °C); from a thermocline at 66 feet (20 m) temperatures drop to 52 °F (11 °C) at the bottom. Analyses show measurable quantities of sodium chloride, sodium sulfate, calcium sulfate, and magnesium sulfate in the water. Lake Titicaca’s fish life consists principally of two species of killifish (Orestias)—a small fish, usually striped or barred with black—and a catfish (Trichomycterus). In 1939, and subsequently, trout were introduced into Titicaca. A large frog (Telmatobius), which may reach a length of nearly a foot, inhabits the shallower regions of the lake. Forty-one islands, some of them densely populated, rise from Titicaca’s waters. The largest, Titicaca Island (Spanish: Isla de Titicaca, also called Isla del Sol), lies just off the tip of the Copacabana Peninsula in Bolivia. Ruins on the lake’s bottom (where the remains of a temple were discovered in 2000), on its shore, and on the islands attest to the previous existence of one of the oldest civilizations known in the Americas. The chief site is at Tiwanaku, Bolivia, at the southern end of the lake. On Titicaca Island ruins of a temple mark the spot where, according to the tradition of the Incas (a Quechuan people of Peru who established an empire about 1100 ce), the legendary founders of the Inca dynasty, Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, were sent down to Earth by the Sun. The Aymara people living in the Titicaca Basin still practice their ancient methods of agriculture on stepped terraces that predate Inca times. They grow barley, quinoa (a type of pigweed that produces a small grain), and the potato, which originated on the Altiplano. The highest cultivated plot in the world was found near Titicaca—a field of barley growing at a height of 15,420 feet (4,700 metres) above sea level. At this elevation the grain never ripens, but the stalks furnish forage for llamas and alpacas, the American relatives of the camel that serve the Indians as beasts of burden and provide meat and wool. The lake plain is covered with vast numbers of pre-Columbian raised platform fields and ditches, now abandoned, which were constructed to improve drainage and enhance the region’s agricultural potential. This ancient system of reclamation has been revived in some areas in both Peru and Bolivia.